BeReals: Barb at Methodist, Watermelons, and Judy at Open Door

August 22, 2023:

Today I had my morning meds at 6am with yogurts. Then I went into Methodist church to volunteer as a translator. This morning when I got there, no one was organizing anything or handing out numbers yet. So I just ran inside and grabbed a few sheets and got like five people registered who were new clients who’d never been there before. I wasn’t really planning on taking a photo, but when my BeReal went off, I got it on time, just taking a photo of Barb working at the front desk. I talked to Barb a bit about feeling like I couldn’t make new friends, and she told me that she considers herself to be a new friend of mine.

Then what I did was I stayed a bit late at Methodist, but not all the way until 3pm, when they closed. After that, I went over to Papa’s house, where we played some Canasta, which unfortunately I didn’t use one of my extra BeReals to take a photo of. He actually beat me this time, which doesn’t often happen. We also sorted out my food for my night meds. We decided to make a salad with some 11g fat fried chicken in it. I had it within two hours of the time I’d taken my morning meds, which he says is close enough. I’m trying to relax a little bit on the times I take my medication because honestly I’m just making it harder for myself by insisting they have to be exactly 12 hours apart from each other.

Then I went into Open Door. At Open Door, there were not a lot of Spanish-speaking volunteers there tonight, so I was very useful. I also talked to the volunteer Judy quite a bit about feeling like I might not be able to make new friends. She told me that I’m incredibly young and there’s plenty of time, and also asked if I was in any support groups for TBI stuff. The other kind of interesting thing is that tonight at Open Door there were ginormous watermelons. I took one of my extra BeReals of them. Kind of the size of a small child. I also told Judy about how this project kind of keeps me moving forward.

Grateful things: Grateful for the new job I start tomorrow, grateful to still speak Spanish, grateful for fat-free Italian dressing, which I ate with my salad.